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In July 1914, Count Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht von Bernstorff, Germany’s ambassador to the US, was summoned back to Berlin for an urgent meeting. Count Bernstorff had a fine aristocratic pedigree, impressive whiskers and a complacent belief that, despite the assassination of the Habsburg heir apparent Archduke Franz Ferdinand a few weeks earlier, war would still be averted.

In Berlin, Von Bernstorff found himself in the presence of one of the Kaiser’s senior spymasters, Major Walter Nicolai, who told him that not only was war imminent, but that the ambassador would henceforth have to play an important covert role